“The ultimate Christmas gift from God,” said Jim Bob Duggar, the father. “She’s just absolutely beautiful, like her mom and her sisters.”

The Duggars now have 10 sons and eight daughters.

The story struck a nerve because just the other night my husband, Anthony, shunned my suggestion that we try for a third.

“Honey, I always wanted a big family and I love our kids so much and wouldn’t it be great to have another baby?” I said.

“What about the environment?” he responded. “Absolutely not! There are enough people in this world!”

I stomped off irked by his response, but deep down I knew he had a valid point. By having a third child, we wouldn’t be simply replacing ourselves. We would be claiming more of the Earth’s resources. The United Nations estimates that the human population, currently at 6.5 billion, is well on its way to 9.2 billion in 2050. The increase in people couldn’t be good for global warming–even if tomorrow we all start driving hybrids, eating locally grown foods, and installing solar panels on our roofs. And I imagine that food and water supply are also serious issues to consider when you add an extra 3.3 billion people to the planet.

My husband certainly isn’t the only one who believes bringing multiple children into the world is environmentally irresponsible. Alan Weisman, a renowned journalist and author of The World Without Us, is an advocate for population control. His best-selling nonfiction book examines humanity’s impact on the planet by envisioning Earth without people. Weisman told Slate, “Let’s cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century, he says, ensuring the habitability of the Earth for the 1.6 billion who remained. At that point, they could all reap the rewards of a more spacious planet, sharing in the growing joy of watching the world daily become more wonderful.”</

These days, we tend to think of saving the environment in terms of personal choice, are we ready for government programs? Hasn’t the “one-child policy” in China been a ghastly failure resulting in numerous coerced late-term abortions and postpartum infanticides?

A professor in Australia came up with another interesting idea: a baby tax. In an article in a 2007 edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, Barry Walters suggested that Australian families pay $4,390 for each child born after their second child, and up to $700 annually thereafter. Walters believes that the money should pay for trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over the child’s lifetime.

Farther on the fringe than Weisman or Walters, Les Knight is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), an informal network of people dedicated to phasing out the human race in the interest of the health of the Earth. Knight believes we ALL need to stop breeding now. (This wouldn’t go over well in Noe Valley, I’m afraid.)

“As long as there’s one breeding couple,” Knight told The Chronicle in 2005, “we’re in danger of being right back here again. Wherever humans live, not much else lives. It isn’t that we’re evil and want to kill everything–it’s just how we live.”

Voluntary Human Extinction sound extreme? Well, yes, but in Great Britain there are actually women who are being sterilized to reduce their carbon footprints. A 2007 article in the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, reported on Toni Vernelli who was sterilized at age 27. “Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” Vernelli told the Daily Mail. “Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.” Vernelli’s strong convictions are commendable but it would be sad if she changed her mind later in life and decided she wanted to have a child. Saving the environment is important but do you have to give up on babies to do so?

***

So what would these environmental activists say to Michelle Duggar, mother of 18? Something tells me it wouldn’t be nice. But if I were to enter into a conversation with one of them, I would have a viable argument–and I actually used it on my husband.

“I’m a green mom,” I told him. “I buy organic milk. I took the Bart train downtown with the kids the other day. I compost. I’m going to instill these ‘reduce, resuse, recycle’ values into our children–and especially our third child.”

“But what if our third child grows into a rebellious teenager and goes out and buys a Hummer to enrage us?” my husband rebutted. “How do you know if he’s going to have the same values? And why do you think you’re so green? How many times have you flown on an airplane this year? A lot! And what about our road trip to Seattle?”

OK. So once again he had a point–though I doubt that Hummers will still be for sale in 17 years. I went to Al Gore’s carbon calculator. I wanted to determine my carbon footprint because I figured that a third child would roughly be the equivalent of adding another version of myself to the world. I plugged my information into the calculator: fuel-efficient car, low electricity bill, drive 10,000 miles a year, six plane flights. My carbon footprint was 8.1. The national average is 7.5–so maybe I’m not as “eco” as I assumed.

I realized that this argument that so many of us use–it’s OK for me to bring multiple children into the world because my off-spring will be environmentally conscious–is weak. I learned on the highly radical yet interesting Voluntary Human Extinction Movement Web site that when a North American couple stops at two children it’s about the same as an average East Indian couple stopping at 30, or a Bangladesh couple stopping at 97. Bottom line: People in North America create a lot of carbon. Even if we’re bringing our canvas bags to the grocery store, we’re buying our food in well-lit places with mega-refrigerators and big parking lots. Even if we’re riding our bikes to work, we’re still hopping on an airplane to see grandma. We’re trying to be green, but we’re so far from carbon neutral. And our lifestyle choices don’t come close to offsetting the cost of adding a CO2-emitter to the population.

So what argument does that leave me with? Michelle Duggar has 18 kids so why can’t I have a three?